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The unusual ways Western parents raise children

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Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#351

Post by ed25519FUUU »

rootusrootus wrote: post #128
ed25519FUUU wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly doctors can spread a lot of disinformation on things not biologically related. For example, our pediatrician recommended we wait until 3 to potty train our son... who at the time was already potty trained. Potty training is also something that differs widely between developed nations and rest of world.

> Potty training is also something that differs widely between developed nations and rest of world. And between kids. My daughter just up and decided at around 18 months or so that she was done with diapers and would use the big girl potty. Not one accident. My son was more apathetic about the whole thing, and it was sometime past his third birthday before he finally started using the toilet to poop in. The piece of…

What you're saying goes to the heart of the article: Why are things so different in western nations compared to developing nations w.r.t. child raising? Potty training is one of the many places where we diverge wildly.

Take for example Vietnam, where kids are out of diapers at around 9 months[1]. Even in the US the age at which children are potty trained has crept up slowly from 1 year to 19 months to 27 months today:

> In the U.S., until the 1950s, most children were using the potty in the first few months of life and completely trained by age 1. In the 1970s, 18 months was an average age to start. Now, it's around 24 to 30 months.[2]

As the article asks, what are the phenomena causing these changes and what explains the huge discrepancies between countries and cultures? Clearly the biology of children does NOT explain the difference.

1. https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/01/130130082726.h...

2. https://www.salon.com/2010/07/09/extreme_potty_training

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#352

Post by ragnese »

tabtab wrote: post #270
ragnese wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm in the U.S. I personally know a non-trivial number of women who have gone through absolutely intense (real, diagnosed) anxiety and depression because of having to feed formula to their child instead of breast milk. If you ever get to peek into these "mommy groups" on social media or in person, you can see how much shaming goes on in there. And the breast milk one is one of the biggest issues people get shamed for…

Breast feeding can be difficult for many reasons. In traditional societies people with experience would take the time to coach a new mother. Sometimes a baby is slow to get the hang of it and will actually lose weight for a while before figuring it out. Allowing your newborn child to lose weight goes against mothering instincts, and without a supporting coach is really hard to accept. And if you "cheat" via bottle, t…

The idea that it's somehow better to have your newborn baby be denied nutrition for their first days of life is a very dangerous one in my opinion.

There have been several cases in the U.S., even in recent years, of children becoming very sick and/or permanently disabled because of mothers waiting too long to give up on breast feeding.

And, honestly, infant mortality is a real thing. People talk about breast feeding at all costs because that's what humans did before formula and "it worked out just fine". It only worked out just fine for the children that survived...

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#353

Post by altacc »

steve_adams_86 wrote: post #49
itsmemattchung wrote: post #17

Definitely something that my wife and I struggle with. She's Vietnamese British, I'm Vietnamese American ; both of us current living in the U.S. Despite what our training classes recommend, we're co-sleeping with our 17 month year old daughter and it feels more intuitive.

Here in Canada it’s sometimes discouraged and criticized to co-sleep, too. I was born here and had never even heard of co-sleeping until I was in my mid twenties. I found it pretty intuitive too, but got some flack from people over it. After 3 kids I don’t really care about the criticisms anymore. They stop co-sleeping when they’re ready, and it was as simple as that. I mostly enjoyed it. Sometimes you miss having a…

The advice against co-sleeping is a typical simplification of advice, where nuance is removed and all parents should receive the same, simple advice.

Peter Blair, based at the University of Bristol, has done some great work studying deaths caused by co-sleeping and found some very important factors, mainly the health of the child, any modifiers of the parent's sleep and the sleeping position. For example, drug use by the parents (including alcohol, cigarettes, over the counter & prescription medicine), making them sleep heavier. Also falling asleep on the sofa or a pillow near the child.

So much parenting advice is one-size-fits-none and it takes quite a bit of effort to work out the reality. Luckily, with a baby in arms there's often a lot of time available for reading the many opinions out there. ;)

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#354

Post by kube-system »

gugagore wrote: post #205
rayiner wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans aren't fat because of Starbucks and McDonalds. Those things are just food. Americans are fat because they eat too many calories and don't get enough exercise: https://www.businessinsider.com/daily-calories-americans-eat... At age 2-3, my parents fed me traditional Bangladeshi meals of chicken or beef curry stewed in heavy amounts of canola oil. My 2 year old, meanwhile, lives on McDonald's chicken nuggets.…

Where did the food that your parents gave you come from? There is no simple reason for WHY people in the US overeat and underexercise. But one facet involves the disruption of rituals and tradition around food. It's still progress by some means that a mother doesn't need to spend as many hours preparing meals for a household, and can instead e.g. work. But I believe we should generally dial back a bit how convenient…

Speaking of rituals and tradition around food, the portion control at a place like McDonalds is probably way better than meals served in many American homes. When I was growing up, it didn't matter if I was full, I wasn't leaving the dinner table until I 'cleaned my plate'. It took a while to unlearn that.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#355

Post by silicon2401 »

lqet wrote: post #188
silicon2401 wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a condescending and unfounded response. Some people can take heroin and not have issues, but that doesn't make heroin safe by any means. You're in a small minority of Americans and not representative of the average person. > The organization estimates that 3/4 of the American population will likely be overweight or obese by 2020.[13] According to research done by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health,…

I agree that there is an obesity problem (although I am not an American), but I am not so sure that demonizing french fries, Chicken McNuggets and hot chocolate from age 4 will have the desired effect. E, to answer the question below: because my personal experience from being a child and caring for a child is that anything that is demonized by the parents becomes extremely attractive.

In response to your edit, there's a lot of gray space between demonizing and letting kids have at it. I was raised on homemade, simple foods and despite loving junk food, I have no problem eating healthy stuff because that's how I was raised. If anything, certain junk food was encouraged, but because the focus was always on a traditional understanding of healthy foods, it was easy to adapt as my personal understanding of "healthy" changed. So we shouldn't demonize anything, but we should definitely teach kids that there's not really any benefit to junk food; if you really have to eat it, make it a treat once in a while but learn to appreciate healthy options.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#356

Post by Berobero »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #281
zeku wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I really don't believe this is true. I was spanked my whole childhood. It never taught me one single thing, because I just wanted to know "why" X was bad and I was never told. It was no more effective than just telling me no. People use spanking as a crutch, it really has no place in the child raising toolkit imo.

Depends on the kid, and depends on when. When you were one, you might have listened to "no", but there are plenty of kids who don't. And it matters because of things like wanting to play in the street. I can't tell a one-year-old what two tons of car moving at 30 miles an hour is going to do to them. But I can train them that every time they play in the street, it hurts. That sounds cruel. On the other hand, letting…

The one time I remember being spanked as a child was -- many, many years after the fact -- explained to me in passing to be for the exact reason you describe. It seems neigh impossible to me to validate that the spanking was "necessary" in any reasonable interpretation of the word; sure, I was never hit by a car as a kid, but you can't really prove a negative either. I can say, unequivocally, however, that 2-year-old me experienced the spanking as a completely arbitrary and utterly humiliating display of violence with absolutely no rhyme or reason whatsoever.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#358

Post by CodeGlitch »

eurusdac wrote: post #345
JKCalhoun wrote: post #313

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For myself, the risk SIDS didn't even enter my calculus. (I confess I am a little skeptical that it exists at all.) Regardless, I perceived the emotional bonding with the mother & father to far outweigh anything else and so we shared our bed with our children until they were perhaps 1 year old or so. And even after, they moved into their own small bed just a foot from ours in the same bedroom for another year or so.…

I think SIDS is a real thing and there is clear evidence that not using pillows or excessive blankets in cribs has reduced deaths. I think sleeping with or not with your kid, is a much more complicated question and probably one where your instinct is right. After all, with a baby in the bed you can't help but be aware of its comfort, needs and amount of movement.

In the UK the NHS have posters and leaflets about how parents should NOT sleep with their baby as deaths have occurred from parents "lying on and suffocating their new born". Of course this from drugged-up and/or drunk parents.

If you don't fall into the "bad parent" category you'll be fine.

Re: The unusual ways Western parents raise children

#360

Post by bluGill »

leetcrew wrote: post #256
gonehome wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets beaten out of you and the easiest response is to just give up and wait it out. “You don’t want to do this anymore? You need this for college, you shouldn’t quit everything you do, I wish I could have done this” etc. Eventually it’s just easier to passively suffer whatever activity you dislike and just recognize the starting cost to trying new things is extreme. > “ I try to tell them their old enough (most ar…

it can be sort of futile. as a kid, you can argue, resist, or break the rules, but until you can support yourself financially, your parents get the final say on most important matters. reminds me of my first meeting with my advisor at college to pick courses for freshman year. I came in with a few ideas for courses/majors that my dad thought were practical. my advisor picked up on this almost immediately and asked "o…

There is truth to both. The problem with charting your own course as a kid is you often don't really know what is worth doing. "Underwater basket weaving" might be interesting, but it won't prepare you for any future. There are a lot of good choices though, you don't have to be a doctor just because your dad wants you to. And your dad might still be under the illusion that lawyer is a great paying job, when for the most part it isn't anymore (or maybe I'm wrong and it will go back to that? your guess is as good as mine).
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